Orphan Man in Top Hat Drinking Coffee
by Stunned Monkey
Summary: Jori One Shot #2 A strange old man watches the group of kids while he drinks his coffee. He is there all the time and he makes note of who they are and what they are all about. A different perspective that I chose to make into a one shot. It is not as edgy as my other stuff, but it makes you feel all warm and fluffy inside. Jori and gang,


**AN: I do not own or operate the characters from Victorious. I just keep them alive. Someone else owns them and has already made a fortune from them. **

**I am not that good at containing my writing to One Shots, but I am going to try. I hope you like it.**

**Enjoy S.M.**

Orphan Man in Top Hat Drinking Coffee

I am always here thanks to my friend Vincent. I have been hanging around this coffee shop since 1985. Every day I sit here and watch the people as they come and go. My entertainment is listening to their stories.

They don't know that I am listening. My face never gives away that I can hear their stories. I have a cup of coffee and sit back in my old chair relaxing. If you asked the customers most would say they had never really taken notice of me.

Lately I have been keeping an eye on a group of young friends from the arts school down the road. Sometimes they come in as a big group and sometimes smaller groups. There is one girl who is here almost as much as I am. She is probably the most interesting one of the entire bunch. She often looks over at me. She knows I am here.

She drinks a lot of coffee. Sometimes she is here early in the morning before school getting a coffee. It seems that most days it is the only thing that keeps her going.

Other times she comes alone in the middle of the night. I watch her through sleep eyelids and see her writing in her note book. I often wonder what she is writing. I don't leave my chair to try and get a peek. Even if I could that would be rude and an invasion of her privacy.

I can only guess that some of what she is writing is about the girl with whom she has fallen in love with. Most of the others do not know anything about their relationship. The two girls keep it secret and hidden very well. I will tell you more about them later.

Now, the red head they call Cat isn't as good at being stealthy. Cat has a huge crush on the weird one. His name is Robbie and sometimes he has a puppet that he talks to. She throws herself at him and he never seems to notice.

The rest of the group is well aware that she would like to date the curly headed kid, but he seems to be oblivious to all of her advances. One of these days I fear that she will have to accost the boy to get through to him.

I feel sorry for her. She is cute and rather childlike at times. Cat isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but she makes up for it in her sincerity. She is a loyal friend and honest to a fault sometimes. If only Robbie would take notice of her.

I don't know what she sees in him. He kind of freaks me out with that puppet crap. He will be old enough to vote in another four months. I tell you there should be stricter rules for having children. Maybe a license or something with a stringent testing process.

He brought her here about a month ago and she sat on the same side of the booth as him and pressed up against and after an hour he still didn't get the idea that this girl was throwing herself at him. She tried to tell him how she felt and the idiot thought she was talking about her liking her coffee.

I would love to help her, but maybe it is for the best. I am not so sure we want them to breed and blessing this earth with more like them. Who knows what their offspring would be like?

The others seem to have it more together. Well now that I say that, I am not so sure that the others are all that normal either. These are Fine Arts students after all, none of them even come close to being normal.

For the longest time I thought that the beautiful long haired brunette and the black guy were a couple, but it turns out they are just friends. That is a good one. No boy can just be a friend to a girl. She might be just a friend, but I guarantee you that he has thought about taking her to bed more than once.

He is a song writer. Once in a while he brings a small keyboard with him and plays and sings. He is very good. I hope that one day I will be able to say I knew him when he used to come to this coffee shop and spill his caramel macchiato on himself.

Lately he has been bringing another girl here. I don't think they are just friends. There has been a lot of looking deep in each other's eyes and hand holding. He even stole a kiss over a latte one night. I am happy for him. He is a nice guy and should have a good girl, but he will never get the brunette named Victoria.

Now that is a secret that none of the others in the group know. Well one other knows. At first the strange girl with the dark hair with the blue and green coloured strands would come alone and drink her coffee. When someone would try to talk to her she would shoot them looks like she was deciding where she would hide their bodies.

She often would play with scissors that she carried in her jeans. If you look at the edge of the table she carved it up a lot. The only word I have been able to see from my spot is "douche".

She always has her notebook and from what I have been able to gather her name is Jade. There is a lot more too her than one might think. She puts this gruff exterior out there to the world, but I have a feeling that she is doing it to protect herself.

There have been some nights when she thought no one was looking she would read from her notes and shed a tear and quickly wipe it away. I think that she hurts deep down inside over something.

I used to think it was because of her break up with the pretty boy. His name is Beck. He is Canadian. The two of them went out for a while, but it recently fell apart. I think she out grew him.

They used to come in here and talk and laugh, but lately it got quieter and they laughed a lot less. Some nights there was a lot of tension between them. She was pushing him away.

He accused her of cheating on him one night, but she assured him that she was not seeing anyone else behind his back. I could have vouched for her. She never ever came in here with another guy. She was always true to him, she just slowly fell out of love with him. It happens.

There was something about that kid I didn't like anyway. She was far too good for him. He was more in love with his mirror than her. She was just convenient. He never seemed to give her the support that she needed. The few times she tried to open up to him he only wanted to talk about himself.

She came here more and more by herself. Then one day I heard her tell Victoria that she and Beck had split up. Tori as she calls herself, was very supportive although I sensed that she was not being completely honest with Jade about something.

From what I understand Tori is a singer with dreams of becoming a super star and Jade is a writer and director. I gathered this from little bits of conversation here and there.

Jade has a dark sense of humor and a very sharp wit. She often lets them out to play when she is with Tori and the rest of the group is around. It is funny, because she is the exact opposite when they are not around. She can never do enough for the Latina. It is very cute, but I would never say that to her she carries scissors and that could hurt.

I was lucky enough to watch this relationship change from one of jealousy on Jade's part, to a deep friendship and then a romantic couple. I feel honored as the rest of the group was kept completely in the dark about this situation.

As time went on Tori and Jade started coming here more and more by themselves. They no longer seemed to need the strength of the group to be around each other.

At first they were reserved. Neither wanting to show their cards too early. Then one night Tori had been crying, something her mother had said to her set her off. She turned to Jade for support instead of Andre or Cat.

Jade had no real experience with comforting anyone as she never let anyone get close to her, but that night she was the medicine that Tori needed to get through this situation and she came through like a trooper.

They were both broken and as far as I could tell the only way they would be whole again was with the help of the other girl. I wanted to step in many times and point things out to them, but that is not my nature.

They learned to lean on each other and they learned to listen and they learned to support each other. It was very subtle at first, a touch of a hand, a smile a gaze. A while later they would touch fingers while they drank coffee sitting across from each other. Then they got brave and bold and sat all one evening holding hands.

I noticed that they did not do things like this when their friends were around. I guess they didn't feel comfortable enough to let them in on their secret. However, when they thought that they would get away with it they would try to sit next to each other and press their knees together. One time they even held hands under the table.

The night when no one else was around and they dared to kiss I was so happy for them. This world needs more love no matter who loves who. Out of all the couples that I have watched come and sit in that booth this was the couple that I would say have the best chance of staying together.

I have not seen them for a long time now. One night Jade came as usual somewhere around four in the morning and she talked to herself as she drank her coffee. I couldn't hear what she was saying. Then she reached in her pocket and took out a small box.

Even an idiot could tell that it was a ring box. She was going to ask Tori to marry her and she was here practicing her proposal. I guess she couldn't sleep with all this on her mind. Who would be able to sleep? She was about to ask the most beautiful girl in the world to marry her.

Oh I wish those two a bright future. They are a great couple and deserve all that life has to offer.

I never saw them again. The place got sold and the new owners decided to make some changes and there just wasn't room for me in the new coffee shop. I am going to a garage sale. I hope I find someone nice to hang out with and watch over. A new adventure awaits.

**AN: Well you go. Please let me know what you thought of the idea. This was fun. I enjoy using different voices to tell stories. I hoped you liked it. Let me know what you think. If you didn't understand the voice, look up Vincent Van Gogh's Orphan Man in Top Hat Drinking Coffee. If you liked this story try some of my other stuff. thanks S.M.**


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